July Meeting Addition

We've got a new item on our July meeting agenda! Stephanie Joyce from SmartSound will give one of the first User Group demonstrations of the highly anticipated new Final Cut Pro/Sonicfire Pro music plug-in from SmartSound. The new FCP/Sonicfire Pro plug-in effortlessly turns scoring markers into fully produced and edited music for your Final Cut Pro projects. SmartSound's always been the only music solution to automatically edit your music selection to any length you need, right from the search engine and they just keep adding even more amazing customizable features. Roundtrip editing with control over timing and instrumentation make music creativity a simple task for every visual producer. Say hello to the new go-to music solution for Final Cut Pro. This is a brand-new and powerful tool for FCP users! One lucky winner will go home with a full version of SmartSound Sonicfire Pro Scoring Edition with the new Final Cut Pro plug in and 2 albums of SmartSound music, a value of $149.99.

Indianapolis International Film Festival

The Indy Film Festival will be running from July 15 - 25. It looks like they have some interesting movies once again. Check their website for the list of films being shown, as well as times and locations.

Final Cut Pro 6.0.6 & iPhone 3GS Video

A couple of quickies:

- First off, Apple released an update to Final Cut pro today. No, not the one we all want, but it is one owners of the newest Mac Pros and Xserves are going to want to download, as it fixes real-time playback issues with those machines. You can get it here.

- As you all have certainly heard by now, the newest iPhone, the 3GS (why can't Apple apply their genius to model names?), has an upgraded camera that also records video. I haven't seen any results yet, but from what I've heard it is pretty good. It could really be the killer app for instantaneous citizen journalism, but who wants to watch video from a small shaky camera? Here's one person that has a solution: Video on the iPhone 3GS: How Far is Too Far?

June Meeting on Summer Vacation

I had planned on giving everyone summer vacation in July, but due to some scheduling changes, have moved that up to June instead. So we will not be meeting on June 23rd after all. That means our next meeting will be in July. The mocha for Final Cut Pro presentation will be given then. I'm still working on the rest of the itinerary for July, but am hoping to discuss the Canon 5D Mark II and some of the accessories and solutions coming out to support video shooting on DSLR cameras. 

May Meeting Lineup

Our May meeting lineup has been set. FCPUG member Terry Bonneau from Bonneau Production Services will be on hand to discuss a project he recently completed that will be distributed soon as an interactive DVD. Terry will show some of the results and talk about the challenges they overcame. Also on hand will be FCPUG member (and most recently Telly award winning Director of Photography) Ken Pace to answer questions about the shooting side of the project, as he shot 99%+ of the project.

Also on tap for our May meeting: Martin Nault from Duncan Video will have JVC's newest video cameras, the GY-HM100 and GY-HM700, with him so you can get some hands on with these interesting cameras. If you happen to have a class 4 SDHC card, bring it with you, pop it in to one of the cameras, shoot some footage, and take it home and see what you think.

You can keep up with group news as well as general video and Apple related news over at our blog (link over there to the left). We also have a new way - Twitter. Go sign up for a Twitter account do a search for us (indyfcpug) and make sure to follow us. It is really easy, and very quick for me to get news and posts out there. The majority of the news will be there. Then the blog will serve for articles that need a little more sorting out or commentary. So the blog and Twitter account will work in combination, and won't necessarily contain the same content.